What goes through my my mind when I read the news with my morning coffee. …Or for the Simon's Rockers in the group, this is my response journal.
At least 23 people were killed when two car bombs detonated outside a hotel near Somalia’s presidential palace in Mogadishu on Saturday — two weeks after the deadliest car bombings in the nation’s modern history.
A pair of car bombs detonated near Somalia’s presidential palace – CNN
sigh….
Kenyan police clashed with protesters in opposition strongholds Thursday as the nation voted for a new president for the second time in three months.
Kenya election: Police clash with opposition supporters – CNN
hmmm
The first modern humans may have emerged up to 350,000 years ago—170,000 years earlier than previously thought. Analysis of ancient DNA has allowed scientists to trace back the ancestry of people from South Africa to determine when our ancestors split from other hominin species. Their findings consistently point to an early date of divergence, between 350,000 and 260,000 years ago.
…Their dating estimates also fit with the fossil record. At least two or three other Homo species are known to have lived in southern Africa during this time. Furthermore, these dates with recent fossil evidence uncovered in Morocco. Scientists found remains from five Homo sapiens individuals that date back to 300,000 years, raising major questions about where the “cradle of humanity” really was.
Study author Carina Schlebusch, also from Uppsala University, said: “Both paleo-anthropological and genetic evidence increasingly points to multi-regional origins of anatomically modern humans in Africa, i.e. Homo sapiens did not originate in one place in Africa, but might have evolved from older forms in several places on the continent with gene flow between groups from different places.”
Ancient Fossils Reveal the First Humans Emerged 170,000 Years Earlier than We Thought
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Survivors react angrily to an academic’s suggestion that some wartime sex slaves were not coerced.
South Korea professor ‘mentally stressed’ comfort women – BBC News
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Catalonia’s parliament declares independence but Madrid imposes direct rule over the region.
Catalans declare independence as Madrid imposes direct rule – BBC News
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It accuses the International Criminal Court of deliberately targeting Africans for prosecution.
Burundi leaves International Criminal Court amid row – BBC News
hmmm
Recognition abroad for Mu Sochua’s human-rights work hasn’t always translated into political power at home. As a political crackdown in Cambodia continues, she’s been presented with unprecedented pressures – but perhaps new opportunities, as well.
Amid Cambodia crackdown, this leader fled. But she hasn’t given up on change – CSMonitor.com
hmmmm
Campaigners say the case demonstrates a culture in Ghana that shields sex attackers.
Ghana investigation after child rape ‘pardon’ – BBC News
Aghhhhhhhh
Icarda’s most vital project — a seed bank containing 155,000 varieties of the region’s main crops, a sort of agricultural archive of the Fertile Crescent — faced extinction.
But the researchers at Icarda had a backup copy. Beginning in 2008, long before the war, Icarda had begun to send seed samples — “accessions” as they are called — to the Svalbard Global Seed Vault, the so-called doomsday vault, burrowed into the side of a mountain on a Norwegian island above the Arctic Circle. It was standard procedure, in case anything happened.
War happened. In 2015, as Aleppo disintegrated, Icarda’s scientists borrowed some of the seeds they had stored in Svalbard and began building anew. This time, they spread out, setting up one seed bank in Morocco and another just across Syria’s border with Lebanon in this vast valley of cypress and grapes known as the Bekaa.
…Mr. Shehadeh says, [he] is why he is obsessed with the wild relatives of the seeds that most farmers plant today. He eschews genetically modified seeds. He wants instead to tap the riches of those wild ancestors, which are often hardy and better adapted to harsh climates. “They’re the good stock,” he said.
He hunts for the genetic traits that he says will be most useful in the future: resistance to pests or blistering winds, or the ability to endure in intensely hot summers. He tries to select for those traits and breeds them into the next generation of seeds — in the very soil and air where they have always been grown.
…Icarda’s entire collection houses seeds that have sustained the people of the Middle East for centuries, including some 14,700 varieties of bread wheat, 32,000 varieties of barley, and nearly 16,000 varieties of chickpea, the key component of falafel. The Lebanon seed bank houses about 39,000 accessions, and Morocco, another 32,000. Most of it is backed up in Svalbard.
In Sudan, Icarda has introduced a wheat variety it hopes will be more resistant to drought and heat. It is breeding a fava bean variety that can withstand a parasitic weed and lentils that can mature in a short growing season.
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The ransomware, dubbed Bad Rabbit and DiskCoder by different sources, has been reported to have hit the Kiev Metro, Odessa airport, Ukrainian ministries of infrastructure and finance, as well as targets in Russia and as far off as Turkey.
The Russian news wire service, Interfax, among the victims, suspended service. The only available story on its website as of 10:30 a.m. Tuesday was a note reading “Interfax news service not available due to hacker attack.”
Widespread ransomware outbreak strikes Ukraine, Russia | TheHill
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Powerful Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman pledged a “moderate, open” Saudi Arabia on Tuesday, breaking with ultra-conservative clerics in favour of an image catering to foreign investors and Saudi youth.
“We are returning to what we were before — a country of moderate Islam that is open to all religions and to the world,” he said at an economic forum in Riyadh.
Crown Prince pledges a ‘moderate’ Saudi Arabia
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You cannot fault the quality of the work or the creativity involved….
“When we establish contact with a community, we maintain that contact,” Andrés said during a phone interview from San Juan. “When we go to a place, we take care of that place until we feel it has the right conditions to sustain itself. That’s what a relief organization should be.”
…Andrés hopes that World Central Kitchen is demonstrating what kind of results a nonprofit with a “private sector mentality” can achieve. He suspects that, in years to come, others will be examining “our successes and failures and how we did it.”
“How we were able to go from 100 meals to a million meals,” he added. The secret, Andrés noted, was the chef community, the many volunteers who picked up a knife and got to it. A chef’s disposition, Andrés said, is to know how to adapt to crisis.
hmmmm
An Afghan Army unit in the south of the country was almost completely wiped out on Thursday, defense officials said, in a Taliban attack that used what is becoming one of the group’s deadliest tactics: packing vehicles captured from security forces with explosives and driving them into military and police compounds.
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Among the more pernicious fake stories that circulated right around the Oct. 1 vote: a picture of the fingers of a woman, allegedly broken by police to stop her from voting; reports that a police officer sent to Catalonia to block the vote had died of a heart attack there, surrounded by activists; and a story of a 6-year-old boy paralyzed by police brutality.
Other fake news stories claimed that photos from a 2012 miners strike in Madrid actually depicted pro-independence Catalans injured during the vote. Some reports seemed intended simply to cause confusion. On social media, people circulated a photo of a man in a yellow shirt, claiming that he was an undercover police officer. As Maldito Bulo reported, he was in fact a pro-independence advocate.
…people sharing fake tweets from politicians and lots of videos of alleged tanks deployed in Catalonia.
El Pais reported that Russians were to blame, suggesting that news outlets such as Russia Today and Sputnik were circulating the fake stories to deepen divisions in Europe. According to Politico, Russian state-backed news organizations and bots aggressively pushed misinformation about the politically charged vote.
How fake news helped shape the Catalonia independence vote – The Washington Post
hmmm
More than 300 people died in Somalia but some are asking why there was less news coverage and sympathy on social media.
Double standards: ‘Why aren’t we all with Somalia?’ | News | Al Jazeera
sigh
It’s been nearly two weeks since U.S. forces were ambushed in Niger, an attack that left four American servicemen dead.
…The Pentagon has not provided a detailed accounting of the ambush by 50 ISIS affiliated fighters which left four US soldiers dead and two wounded and has said the incident remains under investigation. But CNN has talked to half a dozen US officials who describe details of the chaos and confusion which led to the troops being left on the ground for nearly an hour before help could get to the remote area of southwestern Niger where they were operating.
…When four American servicemen are killed, it’s not unrealistic to think the president who routinely tweets random passing thoughts would at least briefly acknowledge their sacrifice.
The deadly ambush Donald Trump hasn’t yet acknowledged | MSNBC
hmmmm
Sebastian Kurz, the 31-year-old foreign minister, was positioned to become the next chancellor.
Austria turns sharply to the right in an election shaped by immigration – The Washington Post
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Amnesty International is urging the United Nations to take swift action on allegations that one or more of its peacekeepers drugged and raped a 19-year-old woman in Central African Republic last month.
United Nations peacekeepers in Central African Republic
Rape is violence. It is the opposite of peace. Peace keeps who engage in violence like rape should be punished as harshly as the militaries they belong too will allow. Not only are they abusing the citizen they are there to protect, they are working against the mission they serve. Flagrant disobedience is the enemy of any well disciplined fighting force. Jail is the very least the offenders should receive.
More than a third of the migrants now in Palermo are children, many travelling alone.
Rescue ship brings 606 migrants to Italy – BBC News
sigh…
The opposition has called for daily demonstrations to demand electoral reforms.
Kenya bans street protests amid election row – BBC News
hmmmmm
Experts predict that it will take months to repair the electrical grid enough that most residents of the island have power. For months, then, the numbers above will be below 100 percent, a constant reminder of how much work the administration still has to do before Puerto Rican society has been restored to where it was before Hurricane Maria hit.
FEMA would rather not broadcast that slow progress. So we will.
FEMA buried updates on Puerto Rico. Here they are. – The Washington Post
sigh….
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